2019-08-25

One of the downsides of fringing...a) at the very endb) with other people
...is that you're at the mercy of what the group wants to go see. While nobody in my circle has Chrohn's Disease, one of the girl's brother did and therefore we ended up spending Friday night watching Game of Chrones and trying to laugh at disease.

Play play features one of my least favourite tropes: "the story of my life". "Write what you know" is good advice and all that, but it also comes across as horribly narcissistic, which we all know arts majors are notoriously guilty of, but they don't have to remind us so effectively. Dan Rosen, helpfully styled as "Dan B. Rosen" fortunately gets that fact about him out of the way relatively early.

Growing up in Halifax, both of Dan's parents were doctors. He was the always seeking attention class clown, when suddenly he got hit by a debilitating illness that neither of them could work out. I'll take a brief aside here to note I know a girl (not one who attended the show) with two doctor parents and she's also diseased. Read into that as you will. Anyways, Dan (a balding guy who vaguely resembles Enrico Colantoni from "Just Shoot Me!") is constantly in hospital before discovering that what he has is Crohn's disease.

He goes into the dietary restrictions quite a bit which resonated well with those of us (most of us) who have diabetic family members who also suddenly can't eat the foods they like to eat. I counted five Game of Thrones references. I'm not a fan of the show, so there may have been more. Martok seemed to think there were a dozen, but I consider his input unreliable. The crowd generally ate it up (Dan had to smack down a brief heckling comment), as the fru-fru fringe crowd (especially on Friday night) really likes their poop jokes. Is it because of all the homos, they have shit on the brain so to speak? Who knows.
There were a few legitimate laughs, a lot of uncomfortable moments when he went into detail about medical stuff I don't like hearing about, He also yammered about "white privilege" because of course he does. For a guy who's been stuck in the hell of the Canadian healthcare system he didn't have much material about its failings: whether that's because he's as delusional about socialized medicne as all "white privilege" talkers are or because he never thought anything abnormal about his experiences, who can say.

For those interested in hearing a sympathetic tale of a teenager whose romantic and professional future was sabotaged by his own bowels, it's engaging enough. I didn't feel it though. Rosen's energy is just enough to keep you interested without being manic however, and except for the third quarter of the play really dragging and getting repetitive, it flowed well enough.

It's that time of year again, and after missing the first half by being on vacation I've been able to fit in the final weekend of the Edmonton Fringe Festival. Just like 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, and most years going back to 2007 and 2006.

2019-05-04

Break out the mint juleps, tell your woman to put on a silly hat, and get ready for the 145th running of the Kentucky Derby from beautiful soaking wet Churchill Downs in Louisville Kentucky.

Currently Tacitus and Improbable have met up at 5-1 to be tied for the favourite this year, with strong contender Omaha Beach already being scratched. And since I'm sitting at home with mint juleps in a proper silver cup instead of somewhere I can gamble, I provide my (mostly) seat of the pants predictions for the main event.

2019-04-13

As you may have also heard, Faggot-Familiar Alliances are still big news because Jason Kenney dares to think maybe parents should know when child molesters like Kristopher Wells or Mike Morrison are being invited to secret meetings with young children who have shown an interest in an evil and unacceptable lifestyle choice.

And if you watch Global TV Edmonton, you'll hear all about the "online reaction":

What you definitely won't hear in the extremely biased and one-sided reporting of fake news peddler Sarah Kraus is anybody opposed to Faggot-Familiar Alliances in school, or even opposed to keeping parents in the dark. Why is that? Because Global News is only looking on platforms that are already setup to exclude those voices. Kraus and her bosses know this, but they'll push the sodomite agenda endlessly and claim ignorance to anybody who pushes back.

So I'm calling out Kraus, her bosses (Jim Haskins and Kerry Powell), and any other media member pushing this false narrative. They know, surely, that Twitter won't even let you call a man by his name to satisfy the insane tranny activists. As a result, the people likely to support Kenney are either removed from the platform (as what happened with Faith Goldy this very week) or forced to self-censor in order to avoid the axe falling on them as well. As a result is it any wonder that pillow biting teachers extolling the benefits of exposing the children they are supposed to protect to sexual deviants are the only tweets Kraus can find (or pretends to find) in her disgusting story?

I call on Global News Edmonton to apologize to Jason Kenney for their story that makes it sound like he's a crazed maverick standing against universal opposition. I demand that they permit those of us who oppose these sick schools airtime in accordance with the popularity of our views in accordance with Global's own news policies which Kraus and Haskins violated:

Integrity, fairness and transparency are at the foundation of our newsgathering process. We are committed to reporting news without distortion or misrepresentation.

How is it not distorting and misrepresentation to talk about "online reaction" and not admit that these social media platforms are biased against conservative expression, especially social conservative expression?

We will not formulate news content based on our own personal cultural beliefs, opinions, corporate influences or those of anyone else engaged in its preparation or delivery.

News events and public issues may be analyzed and put into context, as long as comment or opinion is clearly identified and kept distinct from regular news coverage.

Kerry Powell, will you promise going forward that Global News will cease publishing anti-conservative opinion under the fake guise of "reporting on online reaction"? If not, will these stories feature a disclaimer in the future that the social media platforms these reactions are posted on have a long history of banning, shadow-banning, and suppressing viewpoints that would provide a more balanced (and accurate) set of views?

We all know this story was written, coordinated, and aired in order to attack Jason Kenney. No "online reaction" news stories have ever been posted when conservatives not yet banned on social media have used their accounts to blast Trudeau or Notley. Global News owes an apology to us all, and a promise that in accordance with their own journalistic principles they will not push false narratives in the future.

The chance to set the record straight on the eve of polls closing is fading fast, Global. Your move.

The second biggest story though has to be Bianca Andreescu (7.5/10), who last month surpassed the 10/10 Eugenie Bouchard as Canada's best female tennis player. This week she herself moved into the semifinals herself by defeating 7.5/10 Gabriñe Muguruza. Canadian tennis is now in an Anna Kournikova/Maria Sharapova scenario, where the hotter and famous player has to give way to a younger less attractive girl in the cold hearted reality known as "you may actually need to be good at tennis now and again". Bianca Andreescu is certainly no Maria Sharapova, but she's decent looking enough and can actually win a match or two. It's certainly better than the poor American situation where two shaved ape sisters win the matches while Nicole Gibbs has to languish in relative obscurity.

For now, Andreescu will take on Ukrainian hottie Elina Svitolina (9.5/10). She already, by getting to the semifinals, has in this tournament surpassed her lifetime earnings.

2019-03-12

I'm not being accusatory here, I have failed in the exact same way, but I'm here to help rectify the situation. I was binge watching some "You Gotta Eat Here" over the weekend and I noticed that the iconic Barb and Ernie's Old Country Inn has not yet been featured.† This is a shame, the only reason I don't eat a Bratwurst Eggs Benedict from there every week is that sometimes I don't end up drinking on Whyte, Tasty Tom's exists, and I have started making them at home. So that's a second black mark on the show (the host, of course, being the main one), but that's not Edmonton's shame.

† I also notice that DaDeO (not Dadeo's as everybody calls it) is also not featured on the show, while Louisiana Purchase is. It's reminiscent of Colby Cosh's line about how Patrick Roy isn't even the best goalie born in 1965: they went to Edmonton's second-best Cajun/Creole restaurant. High Level diner is another blog post entirely.

Our shame, instead, is the YouTube view counts. "The what?" I hear you say...well, Barb and Ernie have a YouTube Channel...and the view counts are absolutely pathetic.

I'm going to put them on a loop next time I run to the grocery store and you should too, because the couple who gave Edmonton decades of eggs benedict joy deserve more than 38 views on their travel videos.

2019-03-10

As I type this, the first end has just concluded of the Finals of the 2019 Briar from Brandon, Manitoba. Team Alberta (Kevin Koe, Calgary) is facing off against Team Wildcard (Brendan Bottcher, Edmonton) in a match that I'm sure will confuse the hell out of the Americans. If Bottcher wins it will be the first time a Wild Card wins the Briar.

Which made me wonder: how much is a fully loaded Chevrolet S10 setting you back these days? The answer? $2,200. Yep, that's right: the phone costs you more than an (admittedly old with high mileage) pickup truck. And while Samsung doesn't offer financing in Canada, in the US is does.

If you’re used to apps opening in 0.1 seconds and suddenly they take 0.5 seconds to open, you might feel this phone is slow and laggy, while someone that’s used to a 4-year-old phone that takes 3 seconds to open an app will think it’s blazing fast. Who is right then? Well, both are, it’s all a matter of perspective. And this is where the issue lies.

Missing features are also a lot more impactful to those that have come to rely on them. If you have a wireless charger on your desk at work and your nightstand at home, using a phone without wireless charging is forcing you to revert to older habits, making the phone feel almost ancient. Meanwhile, most users interested in mid-range phones probably won’t use wireless charging for at least a few more years.

It’s hard to give a price to each feature so you can fairly judge if the cheaper phone comes at the right price. Are camera lenses $150 a pop? Is wireless charging worth $100? What about the headphone jack that is now present in more budget devices than flagships? While you can often find the price for each hardware component, those don't translate 1:1 to the cost of the whole device.

Why We Seriously Need an iPhone Killer Sidebar: Like most non-Apple fanboys, I sort of detest the hipster magnets from Cupertino. I understand how they got popular, they make computers (and phones) for babies. People are idiots and really appreciate a single button (I still cannot get over that) that just dumbly does the things they are allowed to do. But there are serious implications to this that impact us all. I was at a party down in Summerside a few years ago where we were sharing some stuff with each other using Bluetooth. I had a Samsung S4, another guy had a Blackberry, K'mpec had an LG Android phone, and Martok actually had a Windows Phone, I think there was another non-Samsung Android user too. Anyways some girl (it's always some girl) wanted to 'tooth with us but we couldn't get her phone to connect. We were having troubles for the longest time until some Apple fanboy at the party helpfully advised us that Apple can only Bluetooth with other Apples. Except that's not how he phrased it: he instead said "Android isn't compatible with Apple Bluetooth". But that's got it exactly backwards: Apple is the thing not compatible with EVERYBODY ELSE. I heard the same thing about chargers a while ago too, a girl said she didn't have a "Samsung charger". I was very clear explaining to her that she was totally wrong: it's not a "Samsung charger" it's a MicroUSB charger and its a standard across all cellphones that don't have a picture of half finished fruit on the back. When you go to Bianca Amour's and see "Samsung" written on Micro USB chargers you should blame the Apple people. And that's before we remember Apple doesn't even let you sideload apps.